PSEG Kearny peaker power plants nearly ready to fire up

Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerRichard Rebori, the plant manager, looks at an engine that similar to an aircraft engine, that powers one of the 6 new peak units.

Beneath the rush of the Pulaski Skyway, workers are prepping six huge natural-gas-fired engines topped by 150-foot towers, the newest generation of Public Service Enterprise Group power plants in the industrial landscape of South Kearny.

They’ll be ready soon, most likely early next month — ready for the moment when all the state’s air conditioners are at full blast, and in the immortal words of Captain Kirk from "Star Trek," "We need more power!"

The only difference: In the real life scenario, "Kirk" will be an employee of Pennsylvania-based grid regulator PJM Interconnection, and the call won’t reach "Scotty," but PSEG plant manager Richard Rebori.

Rebori will get word on his radio, and send the order to start up one of the company’s natural-gas "peaker" plants, so-called because they quickly fire up when energy demand peaks.

How fast will it come online? Fast as a jet fires up — around 10 minutes — and there’s a reason for that.

"This is the same engine you’d see on a 747," Rebori said.

Thirty fuel nozzles ringing the jet engine inject natural gas compressed even more densely than the gas pushed through interstate gas lines, and about 20 times denser than gas delivered to homes.

PSEG is testing six of these peaker units and they should be ready next month, when a legion of Jersey air conditioners blast on at the same time, or if a nuclear plant trips offline for one reason or another.

The units are the latest in a long line of power plants at PSEG’s South Kearny facility, which has been in operation for nearly a century.

The shifts between generations reflect changes in where the United States gets its power.

First, in the 1920s, huge coal-fired plants were built and run for several decades. Then, in the 1950s, a series of oil units were built and churned out power for about three decades.

Now the six new gas-powered GE units are joining four others in Kearny that came online in 2001. The units are called "combined cycle" because a natural-gas-fired turbine generates power, and then its exhaust makes steam that powers a second turbine.

The added units at Kearny will produce about 270 megawatts of power, and other new PSEG-owned peaker units in New Haven, Conn., will produce another 130 megawatts — together, that’s enough to power more than 400,000 or so homes. The additions join a PSEG peaker fleet that is currently 24 units strong.

Natural-gas peakers make sense for PSEG and other power companies because natural gas is cheap, and other fuels relatively more expensive to use.

When the company announced quarterly earnings this month, it said overall output of its fleet of plants declined 6.3 percent, mostly because of declining production from coal units. That came even as output from natural-gas units increased by 8.3 percent.

The foundations for the new Kearny units were laid last June, and in the ensuing year more than 600 workers had a hand in the project, with about 400 working at a time at the peak of construction activity, according to Lee Gray, a spokeswoman for PSEG.

As workers laid the groundwork for the units, the GE engines were on their way from an aircraft factory in Cincinnati.

Other parts were added in Texas, and then the units embarked on a barge voyage from the Port of Houston, across the Gulf of Mexico, around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast, according to Rebori.

The units will be the cleanest ones to ever fire up in South Kearny.

That’s because GE tweaks its designs each year — and because of 4-foot-deep catalytic convertors installed on the jet engines.

"It kind of works like your car, like a catalytic converter in a car," Gray said.

But the converters are much larger and clean more than 95 percent of the units’ emissions, Gray said.

That, combined with injections of ammonia (each unit is flanked by a 10,000 gallon tank of the stuff) keep the units running as cleanly as natural gas units of their type can, according to PSEG.

Those catalytic converters are in place, their ammonia lockers full. Now workers are finishing the job in South Kearny, tightening bolts on a transmission framework, inspecting the GE units in their berths, getting them ready for their moment in the spotlight, when the heat of summer overwhelms the power on hand.